The government maintained insufficient efforts to prevent trafficking. The CNLTP, while intending to lead the government’s anti-trafficking prevention efforts, did not meet for the second consecutive year, and the government did not report allocating dedicated funding for its operations for the fourth consecutive year. The government’s draft 2022-2025 NAP remained pending adoption for the second consecutive year. The government continued implementing its 2019-2023 NAP to combat child labor and child trafficking and allocated 28.6 billion FCFA ($46,515) for its application. The Oversight Committee to Combat Child Trafficking and the Worst Forms of Child Labor (CNS) and the Inter-Ministerial Committee in the Fight Against Child Trafficking, Child Exploitation, and Child Labor (CIM) continued to coordinate efforts to combat child labor and child trafficking. CNS oversaw CIM and conducted monitoring and evaluation activities of the NAP to combat child labor and child trafficking. Observers continued to report the need for dedicated resources and more collaboration between the three committees for the CNLTP to be fully effective. Regional anti-trafficking committees coordinated anti-trafficking efforts in four regions, including implementing regional anti-trafficking action plans. The government conducted limited awareness raising activities on human trafficking and migrant smuggling in collaboration with international organizations. The government also held public awareness campaigns focused on child labor, which included some anti-trafficking components. The labor code regulated labor recruitment and labor migration in the formal sector, but it did not extend to the informal sector, including domestic work, which increased some migrant workers’ vulnerability to trafficking. The government did not report active efforts to monitor such agencies or to hold fraudulent labor recruiters accountable. The government did not prohibit worker-paid recruitment fees. The government trained labor inspectors on identifying child labor and trafficking victims. However, despite conducting more than 9,400 inspections in 2022, labor inspectors did not identify any child labor or child trafficking cases during inspections. The Ministry of Water and Forests, responsible for surveilling the country’s natural resources, also monitored for child labor or trafficking violations during regular patrols of the forests, and its Special Surveillance and Intervention Brigade conducted investigations at cocoa farms; ministry personnel did not report referring potential child labor or trafficking cases to law enforcement for criminal investigation. The government continued implementing its Child Labor Observation and Monitoring System in Cote d’Ivoire (SOSTECI), an early warning mechanism to prevent child labor, and created SOSTECI monitoring committees in 87 cocoa-producing areas. The Ministry of Women, Children, and Families continued operating a hotline to report child protection and human rights violations; officials did not report identifying any potential victims as a result of hotline calls, compared with identifying 27 potential child trafficking victims during the previous reporting period.
The government had two inter-ministerial commissions to adjudicate claims for an official statelessness status and issue nationality documents and birth certificates. While the adjudication process for statelessness status lacked resources and processed claims slowly, the commissions issued more than 10,000 national identity documents to vulnerable populations. The government made efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts by arresting and convicting buyers of commercial sex. The government did not report providing anti-trafficking training to troops prior to their deployment as peacekeepers; although not explicitly reported as human trafficking, there was one open case of alleged sexual exploitation with trafficking indicators by Ivoirian peacekeepers deployed to the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
from 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report – U.S. Department of State
2023 Trafficking in Persons Report – United States Department of State
